Published

“Sorry, the Dunmer were having a Moment.” (ESO log, holiday break edition)

Rampaging guar! Falanu Dren, my Dunmer Templar, is riding the very happy-looking guar on the right.

I… did very little productive this vacation.

I am okay with this! This is what vacation is for.

I did, however, get back into ESO, and play a lot of that with my wonderful guild(s). With Falanu, my main, I hit V12, finished Cadwell’s Silver (wicked overleveled, I know), and started Cadwell’s Gold. Currently Matt and I are blowing through Auridon, doing only the stuff we need to fill out the Almanac, not even reading the quests because I’ve done this zone twice before.

(But Razum-dar is still worth the price of admission!)

Surprisingly, Matt With the Hat (a.k.a. Matt who is not my husband) started playing last week! We suggested he make a Daggerfall Covenant character to pair with our as-of-yet unplayed DC characters, my Imperial Dragonknight, Corvus Duronius, and Matt’s Breton Templar, Ogier Montrose. He obliged, and so the Redguard Nightblade Nasir al-Qiteb has joined us. We tooled around Stros M’Kai and Betnikh together and did the public dungeon in Glenumbra (Bad Man’s Hallows); last night we did the trio of lowbie dungeons (Spindleclutch, Fungal Grotto, and Banished Cells).

Mostly I have been running a lot of dungeons, both normal and veteran, pledges and otherwise, with the UESP guild — in particular, a core of @Faunter, @Lurlock, @Sedrethi, @Deandra, @baratron, and @Wicked_Shifty. There was one day where I ran seven!

I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how easily Matt and I have taken to some of the tougher veteran content. One of our first was vet Crypt of Hearts. We wiped a few times on the last boss, but the trip was more than worth it for the story — you know, your typical “guy meets girl, girl sets up adventuring school, guy meets Mephala, Mephala gives guy the Ebony Blade, guy goes batshit insane and kills his wife and everyone at the school, guy splits wife’s soul into three parts and tortures the souls of the three guys he thought she was sleeping with in increasingly inventive ways.”

(“Somebody get this couple some marital counseling, before Nerien’eth kills us all,” I may have said).

(Also after we had killed Nerien’eth and found his shrine to Mephala, Falanu, Brelyna, and Sedrethi all started doing the /kowtow emote in front of it. “Sorry, the Dunmer were having a Moment,” we told Shifty, the only non-Dunmer among us).

More impressive was vet City of Ash — where we realized, before the first boss, that since we hadn’t used LFG, Matt and I weren’t battle-leveled to V16. Somehow we mucked our way through, although there were a number of deaths along the way, especially to the final boss. That we made it through at all is more a credit to Deandra and Sedrethi’s DPS than Matt’s tanking or my healing.

– Vaults of Madness, the group dungeon in Coldharbour. This one deserves a nod just for being visually stunning. When we got to the last boss, the Mad Architect, my groupmates took their time burning him down just so we could see the abilities he uses. (The glass-breaking, shards-flying-across-the-room effect was amazing — so cool I didn’t get under the bubble in time and died to it!)

– Imperial City Prison (normal-mode — not touching vet until V16). When Matt K saw we were in there, he said, “I see you got yourself imprisoned for stealing. You need to try harder not to get caught.” We told him we were staging a breakout.

– I joined a trading guild that a lot of UESP folks were affiliated with, Hlaalu Trading Company. Because Hlaalu, of course, but also just because I needed a trading guild. Of course now I’ve committed to selling 3k worth of stuff a week or risk getting kicked, but as it turns out that’s not hard to do. If nothing else I can sell a little of my backlog of Perfect Roe…

– UESP hosted a GUAR RAMPAGE!!! Where we all dyed our armor purple and gold, met in Cyrodiil, tried not to accidentally kill folks not in our faction, and took screenshots and ran around the lake on our guar mounts. Others went on to explore some of the PvE content in Cyrodiil, though I didn’t join them.

– I enjoy talking lore, trading character histories, and some light RP with Sedrethi, who’s as invested in his character Ravyn as I am in Falanu. Unfortunately, they don’t always see eye-to-eye; for one, Ravyn’s primarily a follower of Boethiah, and tries not-very-hard to hide his disdain for the Tribunal, while Falanu is Vivec fangirl, worships Mephala as his Anticipation, and would never speak ill of the Tribunal. Falanu’s also affiliated with House Hlaalu, and Ravyn is a Telvanni. As a result there’s a lot of “Imperial bootlicker” and “crazy wizard” sniping back and forth, and my telling him to shut his whore mouth when he suggests the Tribunal isn’t actually divine 😉

Also when I logged on with my Khajiit into a group we were both in, he unleashed his Dunmer xenophobia, calling Bri all kinds of Dunmeris insults (s’wit, fetcher, n’wah, etc). (I, alas, lack in my Khajiiti insults. In retrospect I should have called him “muskarse shaveskin”).

(The other night, in the midst of the sniping on TS, Matt interjected some comment about preferring House Redoran instead. “Is Brelyna a Redoran?” I said, shocked. “Our marriage is a sham!” [Our characters are married too, mostly for the XP bonus it gives in-game]. “Well, she is a warrior…” Sedrethi oh-so-helpfully pointed out.)

– As always, being in a guild with people who know the lore insanely well is delightful. There’s griping in gchat about the guild called “Nine Divines Trading” (“Talos hasn’t even been born yet!”). When Deandra first met Falanu she said, “At least you’re not Falanu Hlaalu.” T’other night in TS we were discussing the trippier lore books, like the Remanada and the 36 Lessons of Vivec. (Oh, Michael Kirkbride. You’re so special).

I’m sure that’s not all, but your patience is more limited than my ability to ramble about the Elder Scrolls 😉 In closing, have this picture of a guy I met at the enchanting station in Rawl’kha: